Zepheira » PURLs

Migration of purlz.org

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:50:30 +0000

The PURL Open Source Software community site at purlz.org has been migrated from Zepheira’s servers to Google Code. Accordingly, the mailing lists hosted at purlz.org are also migrating to a Google Group.

The purlz.org DNS domain will redirect to the Google Code site. The new Google Group that replaces the mailing lists is: http://groups.google.com/group/persistenturls. Please subscribe!

Thanks for your patience and support as we transition the community infrastructure. We look forward to continuing to serve you and the PURL community.

Zepheira to Upgrade and Host US GPO PURLs

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:56:55 +0000

The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) has announced the development and hosting of new Persistent URL (PURL) architecture by Zepheira. GPO’s PURL service provides persistent Web addresses for critical government documents and is primarily used by the more than 1,200 Federal Depository Libraries. GPO PURLs are open to members of the public.

GPO’s public announcement listed several benefits of the contract to Zepheira, including upgrading the GPO PURL server to the PURLz software developed by Zepheira in conjunction with the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) in 2008. PURLz is Open Source Software and managed by Zepheira in an open community environment.

The upgraded PURL infrastructure is expected to move into production use during Summer 2010.

PURL Federation Development Effort

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 18:33:48 +0000

The National Center for Biomedical Ontology and Zepheira are pleased to announce work on a PURL Federation. A PURL Federation will allow multiple PURL service operators to cooperate in PURL resolutions, covering for each other in the case of service outages and allowing the persistent resolution of PURLs as funding levels and organizational details change with time.

PURL Federations are intended to enhance the ability of Semantic Web and Linked Data communities to ensure the persistence of their identifiers.

Prototypes of the PURL Federation code will be released occasionally in the coming months, with an Alpha version to be released in the Summer of 2010. Further announcements of releases will be made on the purl...@purlz.org mailing list and on the PURLZ website.

The architecture document guiding the development of a PURL Federation is available at:

Review and feedback on the proposed architecture is encouraged.

OCLC Launches new PURL server built by Zepheira

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 18:46:41 +0000

On July 27, 2009 OCLC upgraded their PURL server to a new open source platform built by Zepheira. PURLs are Web addresses or Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) that act as permanent identifiers in the face of a dynamic and changing Web infrastructure. OCLC’s upgrade reflects their continued support to provide persistent, stable World Wide Web (WWW) addresses for the international library and education community, government, business, and non-profit organizations, and private citizens. OCLC’s PURL server currently resolves approximately two million PURLs per day.

The new PURL software developed by Zepheira reflects current Web architecture as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). This new software provides the ability to permanently identify networked information resources, such as Web documents, as well as non-networked resources such as people, organizations, concepts and scientific data. This capability will represent an important step forward in the practical ability to support “linked data” across application, enterprise and community boundaries.

PURL Server version 1.5 Released

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:57:01 +0000

PURL Server version 1.5 has been released and is recommended for all PURL server operators.

Version 1.5 of the PURL server subtly changes the relationship between PURLs and domains to better support legacy PURLs. Domains may now be created that contain PURLs of the same name (that is, a PURL with a name corresponding to an empty string or a ‘/’ character).

PURLs may now be created with names that differ only by a trailing ‘/’ (e.g. /net/foo and /net/foo/).

These features were added in support legacy PURL migration. Naming new PURLs with these patterns is not encouraged.

No reported bugs were addressed in this release. However, some additional URL-encoding of form elements was added to the Web user interface to better support special characters.

PURL Server version 1.5 is available from:

Please see also the README:

and Release Notes:

Persistent URL (PURL) Server version 1.4 Released

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 17:02:01 +0000

The PURLZ Persistent URL Server version 1.4 is now available. See the PURLZ Downloads area to get your copy now. This release improves handling of URLs with query strings and special characters. It is recommended for immediate use by all PURL server operators. PURLs are Web addresses or Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) that act as permanent identifiers in the face of a dynamic and changing Web infrastructure. This capability provides continuity of references to network resources that may migrate from machine to machine for business, social or technical reasons. Details are available on the PURLZ community site. Please see also the README and Release Notes for version 1.4.

PURL Legacy Loader Now Open Source

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 16:10:40 +0000

A legacy loader is available to take old OCLC version 1 Persistent URL (PURL) database dumps and upload PURLs into the new project‘s RESTful API. This is not production code, but is provided in the hope that it may be useful to operators of old PURL servers wishing to migrate to a more modern PURL server. The legacy loader has been released under an Apache 2.0 license. To get the legacy loader, use Subversion to check it out like this:

svn co http://purlz.zepheira.com/svn/purlz/purlsbulkloader

Check out the code and follow the directions in the file README.txt. This information is also available at the PURL PURL Project’s Download Area .

Persistent URL (PURL) Server version 1.3 Released

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 19:25:28 +0000

The PURLZ Persistent URL Server version 1.2 is now available. See the PURLZ Downloads area to get your copy now. PURLs are Web addresses or Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) that act as permanent identifiers in the face of a dynamic and changing Web infrastructure. This capability provides continuity of references to network resources that may migrate from machine to machine for business, social or technical reasons. Details are available on the PURLZ community site.

PURLZ Server version 1.2 released.

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 19:31:41 +0000

CSC Releases Digital Disruptions Report; Names Zepheira

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:25:18 +0000

Computer Sciences Corporation ( CSC ) has released their landmark new report, Digital Disruptions: Technology Innovations Powering 21st Century Business . CSC’s announcement and the entire 94-page, 7.5 MB report (PDF) are available on the Web. Zepheira’s work on the re-architecture and re-implementation of Persistent URLs ( PURLs ) and subsequent release of the source code as an Open Source project and community were highlighted on pages 74 and 75 of the report. Zepheira’s Project Remix was also mentioned. Zepheira is pleased to see its work on next-generation Internet infrastructure acknowledged by CSC.